Online students typically won't take advantage of having your personal cellphone number...Really! @ghweisenborn

Make sure your students can’t get lost - make sure they know your expectations, what they should be doing, when it needs to be done, and your expectations for the course.

Have a format for discussion that rotates roles on a weekly or biweekly basis.

Don’t underestimate the time commitment to teach online.

Well-designed media is important. Needs to be an interactive experience.

grade frequently. Every week or more often. If you don't grade, they don't do.

Champion the student voice

Give students the opportunity to construct the learning

Create a sense of community.

wear a funny hat

Online teaching isn’t about taking your face-to-face course materials and uploading them to a course!

It is okay if things don’t go perfectly the first time- they probably won’t. You’ll learn and keep improving along the way...

Prompt and frequent feedback is a must

It is more important what the students do then what you do.

Make a Downton Abbey reference.

Encouraging authentic voices in responses

Adults want choice...give a choice of which activity to select

Be well prepared. Quality comes from advanced thoughtfulness.

Important to teach faculty how to teach online

Expect that technology will fail -- have a Plan B and a Plan C. Consider this part of course preparation.

everyone likes funny cat pictures. >^..^<

Create opportunities for students to create community and solve their own problems.

Create social presence using audio (weekly audio introductions), create interactive and engaging activities that create peer learning community, including group work, use asynchronous discussions and be present in discussions online, but don’t make them teacher-centered, manage students expectations, manage student expectations, manage students expectations, provide frequent-feedback, low stakes assessment (CATS, quizzing, etc.) so students can correct learning before big exams (Midterm/Final), don’t use tech because it is sexy; it can be high risk, especially in content delivery, USDept ED shows text w/images impact learning over other rich lectures, make sure content is accessible, evaluate your course throughout the lifecycle of the course, provide opportunities for higher order learning, experiential learning to engage students -- have a great faculty development program that covers all these things and is facilitated by peeps who teach online, use social media ;) (Tanya Joosten, @tjoosten, professorjoosten.blogspot.com)

Incorporate choices for student assignments and assessments.

Missing theme - where’s the research, the documentation, the studies that show that Online Learning is as effective as F2F. Lots of profs are resistant and like to have this research to review.

Connecting visually with your students, either video, Skype, etc. immediately at the beginning actually changes the quality of your interactions from and with students. Instead of a text-based announcement to read a long syllabus - a video walk-through can do wonders for immediate relationship building (personalizing the instructor)..l

Dd

Don’t assume all the students are tech savvy, nor that they have the same level of technology. Early collaboration with IT staff is key. Know the tech capabilities of your campus.

Involve those students who are afraid to participate because they fear humiliation. If course is designed to be asynchronous, consider making sure that your discussion boards are really about creating content and community, so use tools that hold back the original posts until all in; then releasing and having students analyze and synthesize the content and reply to a moderated list again. Use wiki, group projects to have students then develop the topics.... students are so tired of respond, post 3 times (engage..really).... so get them to be responsible thinkers and then creating new content having (1) a F2F orientation and (2) periodic synchronous (online) sessions.

use solid concepts built around quality matters dic synchronous sessions.

Review your learning objectives to ensure adequate level of Bloom’s. Don’t be afraid to drop things when you go online - you only have so much time.

go crazy like Curt Bonk (R2D2 is memorable). Model the behaviors you expect from students.

Make students accountable for their learning. Contracts are great. (So are rubrics as long as your students are interpreting them the same way you are--provide examples. [hag@uvm])

Project based learning to demonstrate learning outcomes.

Remember that it’s about the student and not the teacher . . .

Make sure feedback is clear, explicit and includes opportunities to ask questions for clarity.

When building the course, think like a film director: everything in the frame is there for a reason. Control the environment--keep it focused. When running the course, think like a good hostess--keep everyone involved, keep things moving, but don’t be the focus of attention. [hag@uvm]

You don’t have to have all the fun. Let students create and post materials, search out and post resources, do video responses, use apps like ThingLink, screencasting, Pinterest, etc. [hag@uvm]

For facultative resources online and free: check out the University of New South Wales, Learning to Teach Online (LTTO) Episodes:

http://online.cofa.unsw.edu.au/learning-to-teach-online/ltto-episodes

Closing question: How do your “lessons learned” align with the four categories? Or, what is one thing you would tell someone just starting online teaching?

Start small. Consider how much time you expect things will take, then double that.

The best way to be an online teacher is to try your hand at being an online student. . . take a course (such as SLOAN-C) and have an “online experience.”